UPDATED, 4:55 p.m.: See the jump for a Cruz spokesman's full statement. It notes that among the 13 Supreme Court cases listed in the top two categories, those that don't say "successfully" are ones he lost.

UPDATED, 3:45 p.m.:

The Cruz campaign points out that although the website introduced the case as among those he litigated and won at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Jessica’s Law matter was the only one whose description didn’t start out by saying “successfully represented” or “successfully defended.” Instead, it just says “defended,” so a discerning reader could have picked out that the case might not have been won.

ORIGINAL POST:

Senate runoff contender Ted Cruz is mistakenly listed in his law firm's online biography as having won a Supreme Court case about applying the death penalty to the worst child rapists, when he actually lost.

In one of the last cases he handled as Texas' top appellate lawyer, Cruz in 2008 argued in support of Louisiana on behalf of a coalition of 10 states that contended the death penalty for raping a child was constitutional in certain circumstances. In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, saying "the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child."

The decision didn't entirely overturn Jessica's Law in Texas, the statute named after Jessica Lunsford, a Florida girl who was raped and buried alive by a convicted sex offender in 2005. Texas lawmakers added to the law a fallback position: Life without parole would apply if capital punishment for child rape was outlawed. And stiffer sentences for first-time offenses survived.

The 2007 Texas law was championed by Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who is Cruz's opponent in the July 31 GOP runoff for the state's open U.S. Senate seat. Even though Texas lawmakers passed a more limited law than Louisiana, applying the death penalty only to repeat offenders, the Supreme Court's decision took down the capital punishment piece in it and several other states' laws.

Both Texas Monthly, in a blog post on Wednesday, and the Austin American-Statesman, in a March story, have reported on how Cruz and his counterparts in the states defending their laws overlooked an obscure 2006 federal law that added child rape to the military death penalty. It's unclear, though, that the justices would have decided the case any differently if they had been told of the change in the military penal code.

The Cruz campaign and his law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the apparent mistake in his web bio.

Statement by Cruz campaign spokesman James Bernsen:

"Every word of the firm bio is correct. The bio states 'Mr. Cruz has litigated and won some of the biggest cases in the nation before the U.S. Supreme Court and courts of appeals across the country....' That is indisputably correct; indeed, National Law Journal has described Ted as 'a key voice' to whom 'the [U.S. Supreme Court] Justices listen.' The bio then lists many of the cases he has argued and briefed. Those that he won (for example, Global Tech v. SEB and Medellin v. Texas), it states that he 'successfully' represented the client. And those in which he did not prevail (for example, Kennedy v. Lousiana and Connick v. Thompson), it simply states the position he advocated, but omits the word 'successfully.' Although Ted has won the overwhelming majority of the appellate cases he has argued, he has not won every single case, and the bio explicitly differentiates those he won from those he lost."